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In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. [1] Examples of semivowels in English are y and w in yes and west, respectively.
It is not often clear, however, whether such sequences involve a semivowel (a consonant) or a diphthong (a vowel), and in many cases, it may not be a meaningful distinction. Although many languages have central vowels [ɨ, ʉ] , which lie between back/velar [ɯ, u] and front/palatal [i, y] , there are few cases of a corresponding approximant ...
Meaning Origin language and etymology Example(s) bacillus: rod-shaped Latin baculus, stick Bacillus anthracis: bacteri-Pertaining to bacteria: Latin bacterium; Greek βακτήριον (baktḗrion), small staff bacteriophage, bactericide: balan-of the glans penis or glans clitoridis: Greek βάλανος (bálanos), acorn, glans balanitis: bas-
Liaison only happens when the following word starts with a vowel or semivowel, and is restricted to word sequences whose components are linked in sense, e.g., article + noun, adjective + noun, personal pronoun + verb, and so forth.
The effects of the semivowel include the following: Though always in hiatus with a following vowel, semivowel i and y are never pronounced like long i or y (e.g. /aɪ/); historically semivowel e could also be distinguished from "long e" (formerly [ɛː] or [eː]). In current varieties of Anglo-Latin, semivowels are pronounced in a variety of ways:
In linguistics, umlaut (from German "sound alternation") is a sound change in which a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. [1]The term umlaut was originally coined by Jacob Grimm in connection with the study of Germanic languages, as umlaut had occurred prominently in many of their linguistic histories (see Germanic umlaut). [2]
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In the phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, the sound that forms the peak of a syllable. [5] A phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak (nucleus) of many or all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages that have them) coda.